Hep virus may help HIV sufferers

The lives of HIV and Aids sufferers appear to improve if they are also infected with a benign hepatitis virus known as GBV-C, according to US researchers.

In an article published in the March 4 edition of New England Journal of Medicine, Roger Pomerantz says a better understanding of how HIV interacts with GBV-C may help researchers devise improved therapies for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The possible improvement to HIV sufferers' lives was drawn from a study of 271 HIV-infected men over 15 years, published separately in the journal.

"People who are dual-infected do better than those infected with only HIV," wrote Pomerantz, a medical professor and director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Environmental Medicine and director of the Centre for Human Virology and Biodefence at Thomas Jefferson University's Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.

He said double-infection could improve the quality of life for sufferers.

"They do better in terms of being less likely and taking a longer time to progress to AIDS, in addition to being less likely to die from AIDS," Pomerantz wrote.

According to Pomerantz, the HIV/GBV-C connection may be the first known example of infection with two human viruses being better for a person than infection with only one.

"Men without GBV-C five to six years after HIV seroconversion were 2.78 times as likely to die as men with persistent GBV-C viremia," the study's authors said.

The study was coordinated by the Maryland-based National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

GBV-C, which was called hepatitis G virus until recently, does not cause any known disease.